I’ve described Johnny Cash before as the “brooding rebel” of the Sun Records line-up, but maybe a better description of him would be soulful renegade. If country music were to have a Mount Rushmore, Cash would be an obvious choice for the honor. His sound was sparse, pared down to his simple percussive guitar work and tortured baritone, and there was a haunted, mystical energy it. Whether he was telling elaborate stories in his songs or being defiant, Cash married the naked emotions of folk music to the world-weariness of country and add his own wild-man energy into the mix. He could just as easily sing a song about waiting for an execution or longing for spiritual peace and have you believing every word. While eternally tied to the world of country music, Cash still found a way to blur his sound so that one couldn’t imagine early rock and roll or punk rock without him.

There are pretty pop songs, and then there’s the music that the Beach Boys made. Early singles were warm, inviting little ditties about cars, girls, and surfing. Then came albums like Today! and the indomitable Pet Sounds, which transitioned their sound into sophisticated textures and warm harmonies. Those harmonies only got more intricate and complex as time went on, culminating into the strange psychedelic sounds of Sunflower and Surf’s Up. Brian Wilson’s desire to trump Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound and the Beatles created numerous pop songs which could be described as perfection, think of “California Girls” or “Heroes and Villains.” The Beach Boys exemplify a California that no longer exists, and maybe it never did outside of their hit songs. That is what makes the Beach Boys so special, they create an entire musical world in the span of three to four minutes.

Most will only remember them as a two-hit wonder from the 80s, but once you discover the albums of Romeo Void, it’s hard not be in love with them. They played their music with the brainy, arty intensity of Roxy Music, threw in some jazz-style saxophone flourishes, and tied it all together with Debra Iyall’s dark, poetic imagery. Not quite punk, but definitely New Wave, Romeo Void emerged from a group of misfits who met at art school. They said their name means a lack of modern romance, and their rapid-fire lyrics definitely hammer that point home in songs like “A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing).” Maybe because she’s a chubby girl, maybe because she’s a woman of color, but I’ve always felt that Debra Iyall never got the proper credit paid to her for the originality she brought to the New Wave scene. They only released three studio albums, an EP, and a greatest hits collection during their brief tenure, but it’s some of the best, most underrated music of the era.

The 1970s were not the kindest era to rock and roll, too many bloated songs and indulgent nature of arena rock of the time. Then the Ramones came crawling out of a sewer in Queens with three chords, inane lyrics, and stripped the heart of rock and roll down to the frayed basics. Complexity was left in the dust for simplicity and manic energy. Joey Ramone didn’t have much range, but no one sounded as exuberant as he did on so many of their singles. What returns me to the Ramones music time and time again, aside from the buzz saw tone, are the anti-social themes, that strange alienation one frequently feels in life. Their songs relied upon catchphrase-like lyrics wrapped up in the pop influence of bands like the Beach Boys, but played without such finesse. The Ramones were a big cartoon version of rebellious bad boys, flipped rock inside-out, and embraced kitsch as an ethos.

Favorite Songs:
1) I Just Want to Have Something to Do
2) I Wanna Be Sedated
3) Rockaway Beach
4) Blitzkrieg Bop
5) Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World
6) California Sun

“There wouldn’t be any Beatles without Buddy Holly,” a direct quote from Sir Paul McCartney. If that doesn’t give enough credence to Buddy Holly’s importance to the history of rock and roll, I don’t know what else anyone could possibly want. It’s hard to wrap your brain around the fact that Holly was only a major player in the music for a mere 18 months, producing an astonishing body of work in that time which has made him immortal. To think of what else he could have accomplished had he not died at 22 is infuriating and depressing. But what he left us with is an assortment of songs that weave in and out of rock, pop, country, and rockabilly with grace, held together by Holly’s hiccupping vocals and strong songwriting. That last part is probably the most enduring and lasting trend Holly brought to rock and roll aside from his sound, he made songwriting an essential skill for any musician.

The Velvet Underground are a signpost in the evolution of rock and roll. There was everything before them, and then they broke down everything into mutated shapes and experimental forms. Rock and pop music had flirted with lyrics about sex and drug use, but never with honest candor of Lou Reed’s musings. The Velvets magic occurs in the way that they mash a primitive, experimental, sometimes highly aggressive style of playing with artsy, often obliquely poetic lyrics. This fusion of avant-garde formal expression and matter-of-fact vocal delivery defined a narcotic, street-smart cool that reverberated into punk, New Wave, heavy metal, and singer/songwriter confessionals. A band out of step with their era, time has only been kind to the Velvet Underground’s work and enduring legacy.

Listening to the Stooges is to hear rock and roll played with a primitive, visceral, grimy edge that did all of the foundation work for punk, metal, and other forms of hard rock. Their music is alive, and unafraid to be confrontational. They were as hard and weird as the Velvet Underground, but a little less cerebral. The Stooges thrust vulgarly about in a mad dance, threatening to explode into an orgy of sex and violence right before your very eyes. Where much of rock and roll was played with a penchant for the rhythmic foundations of R&B, the Stooges played their few chords with little finesse, sounding more like a group of underground dwellers who found abandoned instruments and decided to make a wild noise. Too dangerous for the mainstream of their era, they’re now considered one of the greatest bands, which is exactly as it should be.

In my opinion, there’s Joni Mitchell, and then there’s everyone else. No one really comes close to matching the beauty, poetry, or specificity of her lyrical prowess. As a guitarist she is highly underrated, crafting strange chord progressions and odd tunings which painted new musical colors to play with. She’s never been an artist concerned with hits or huge sales, preferring to follow her muse to whatever strange journeys and locations it took her too. While frequently dubbed a folk singer, her music has more in common with jazz or pop standards, and later more experimental albums like Hejira show this off to beautiful effect. Joni Mitchell turned every emotion into tenderly rendered and evocative art.

The Cure began life as a simplistic post-punk power trio, and it wasn’t long before their sound began to compass massive, gorgeous gloomy soundscapes. Underneath the all-black image is a pop catalog of hummable melodies, inventive lyrics, and killer guitar hooks. While the line-up of musicians has changed greatly over the years, Robert Smith has always been the figurehead and main creative spark of the band. His ghoulish image occasionally pins the band as a goth outfit, but their textured sounds on Disintegration and big pop hooks on songs like “Friday, I’m in Love” prove they’re more diverse than often given credit for. Strange to think that a group primarily writing songs about alienation and depression went on to become arena-rock gods. Yet that’s why everyone loves the Cure, their oblique songs speak to the misfit teenager in all of us.

Bob Dylan isn’t a rock star, he’s a strange little poet shaman from another time and place, a wanderer in his musical life. He pioneered the school of confessional singer/songwriter, yet he was just as instrumental in the development of more hallucinatory, rambling songwriting. Beginning as a folk singer, he was soon turning the folk song into a form of pop songwriting, before abandoning it and going electric, tossing that aside and moving into country-rock. This is just the quickest of overviews to what he managed to accomplish. His influence was immediate in his peers, but also sent deeply felt ripples that continue to this very day. His voice is not classically beautiful, but it helped redefine what a singer could be, like so much of Dylan accomplished this tiny example could be writ large as his legacy.

Favorite Songs:
1) It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
2) Mr. Tambourine Man
3) Just Like a Woman
4) The Times They Are A-Changin’
5) Like a Rolling Stone
6) Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

It’s hard to describe Prince, his career is too wildly full of detours and strange choices, his output so massive that it’s almost overwhelming to scale. I think the only word that can properly describe Prince is singular. In his commitment to redefine and fuse pop, funk, rock, dance, and soul into some kind of crazy sex-and-religion obsessed prism is what makes him so great. No matter how inconsistent or maddeningly off-the-wall his choices, they’re consistently informed by his purple-hued point-of-view. His first masterpiece was Dirty Mind, and his run of incredible albums/singles lasted throughout the 80s and early 90s, a legacy that most artists would be happy to rest upon, but not Prince. He was always out there doing his funky best until the very end.

Phil Spector had a remarkable roster of talent, but something about his massive productions and Ronnie Spector’s romantic vocals married into something truly beautiful. Legend has it that Brian Wilson’s first reaction to “Be My Baby” was to pull off the side of the road and weep. It doesn’t matter whether or not this story is true, it’s an appropriate reaction to these “little symphonies for the kids,” as Spector has dubbed them. Spector’s building his Wall of Sound around these girls, who acted more like a street gang than a pop group. They spoke directly to male listeners instead of the common practice of treating these songs like a gossipy session with their closest girlfriends. The Ronettes were the cool, sexy, bad girls hanging out on the corner and harmonizing while other groups indulged in glamour and sophistication, this is why they’re my favorite.

Favorite Songs:
1) Be My Baby
2) Walking in the Rain
3) I Can Hear Music
4) Chapel of Love
5) Keep on Dancing
6) You Came, You Saw, You Conquered

There are punk bands, and then there are the Clash. A merry band of riotous and angry punks who married their political viewpoints, furious musicality, and various genres to explode punk into something weirder, stranger, more provocative. London Calling looked to the past with its cover harkening back to Elvis Presley’s debut, but blazed a trail towards rock and roll’s eventual future in which genres mashed and blended into something new. They were rebellious in spirit, but that rebellion always had a cause and an expertly crafted song to express it. The paranoia of capitalism (“Lost in the Supermarket”), societal ills (“Know Your Rights”), and the appropriation of renegade imagery (check the cover of Give ‘Em Enough Rope) are frequent themes in their work. It’s funny to think about, but the Clash never reached the heights in their heyday of what they believe they did, but they left a glorious legacy that has yet to dim in urgency or power.

Favorite Songs:
1) I Fought the Law
2) London Calling
3) Should I Stay or Should I Go?
4) Hateful
5) Career Opportunities
6) Clampdown

A group of art school graduates who combined fashionable images, with sleek sexuality, pop music experimentation, and earnestly soulful vocals. Bryan Ferry was addicted to melody and crooning, while Brian Eno wanted to expand the possibilities of art-rock, and their early albums see these two personalities clashing beautifully. Icons of cinema were frequently employed as visual metaphors, and an addiction to glamour and the avant-garde continued even after Eno’s departure. They managed to work in elements of soul and disco, before ending their career with the sophisticated and romantic Avalon. From Roxy Music’s head sprung the beginnings of New Wave and punk, and they’re still somehow severely underrated.

Favorite Songs:
1) Virginia Plain
2) In Every Dream Home a Heartache
3) Editions of You
4) Love Is the Drug
5) More Than This

A – C

ABBA is easy to underestimate and think of as a cheesy holdover from the 70s, but their legacy and artistic worth goes far beyond the karaoke-ready songs like “Dancing Queen” and “Fernando.” Their fashion sense, quirky and tacky in equal measure, is the image of 70s disco when you really think about it. And their songwriting is second to none, ranking alongside Brian Wilson and Phil Spector in meticulously crafted hooks and ear-worm melodies. And they were amongst the first groups to create and popularize the concept of the music video long before MTV even became a reality.

Favorite Songs:
Does Your Mother Know
Like an Angel Passing Through My Room
Take a Chance on Me
Super Trouper
SOS

There’s a long and accomplished legacy of British soul and pop divas – Dusty Springfield, Shirley Bassey, Lulu – and Adele is their prodigal daughter. In an era that has relatively little need for singers to be able to carry a tune (how else to explain the likes of Katy Perry and Ke$ha?), Adele harks back to an older time. A song like “Chasing Pavements” could have been released decades ago and it would have had the same effect upon listeners. She writes her own music and can sing just about everyone under the table, she’s a shot in the arm for the industry and proof that talent trumps all.

Favorite Songs:
1) Rumour Has It
2) Someone Like You
3) Rolling in the Deep
4) Make You Feel My Love

The B-52s are deliciously flamboyant, hell they’re straight up camp a lot of the time, and creators of heedlessly jubilant dance music. I suppose one could dub them space age surf rock, because how else would you describe songs like “Theme from a Nude Beach” or “Cosmic Thing”? Everything that was good, fun, and popular about the pre-Beatles American music scene is woven into their DNA as a band, and it’s combined with a healthy obsession for beach movies and goofy sci-fi. Tongue planted firmly in both cheeks at the same time, they released a body of work that told us what happened to the girl from Ipanema and a song that descended into corny jokes about hairpieces. Infectious and armed with a knowing wink, the B-52s slowly transformed into one of the greatest alternative rock acts of their era, and I don’t think anyone saw that one coming.

With the mission statement of “Loser,” Beck was branded with the Voice of His Generation tag. And much like an earlier genre-splicing generational speaker – Bob Dylan, he promptly took that tag and shattered it with his unconventionality. Born from a mixture of anti-folk and noise-rock, he was patenting his own mixed-breed genre since day one. He has by turns gone Americana/country (“Guess I’m Doing Fine”), electro-pop (“E-Pro”), and hip-hop (“Where It’s At”), while coyly subverting and expanding those genres to their limits.

Concise, alternately smart-alecky and tortured, the Buzzcocks are just a seminal punk band. Clearly taking their lead from fellow American and Brit punkers, the Buzzcocks brought a smart, aggressive and melody-minded sensibility to the thrashing three minute pop song. Songs like “Oh Shit?” and “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” practically laid the groundwork for bands like Green Day to come along and dominate modern rock radio. They were also expertly written song that were fired off at such a high volume, quick pace and with such snark that you couldn’t help but love them.

Favorite Songs:
What Do I Get?
Ever Fallen in Love?
Why Can’t I Touch It?
Everybody’s Happy Nowadays
Love You More

Funny how Blondie and the Talking Heads are so fondly remembered, but the Cars seem to be forgotten, or, at the very least, severely underrated. Sure, they were more commercially minded than their New Wave/punk peers, but they’ve left behind a body of work that stands alongside any of the other groups. And, truly, the Cars’ music does live up to their namesake. Sexy, mechanical, full of attitude and noise, the Cars are one of the great New Wave/punk bands.

He wasn’t dubbed “The Genius” for nothing. Sure, soul music had existed before Ray Charles, but he revolutionized the form by adding equal parts gospel, R&B, jazz, pop and soul. His talents extended beyond his big bang of soul music into the realm of arranger, bandleader, pianist and vocalist. And his voice is an instantly recognizable instrument, filled with noises and imperfections that became beautiful because you know everything was coming up from his core.

It’s the ache that gets you whenever you listen to Patsy Cline. Her technique was more classically pop than country, but that quiver makes such genre boxes seem silly, if not obsolete. Who cares what genre she’s singing when you’re being given the opportunity to listen to a singer as talented and emotional as this? But it isn’t just her voice that makes her such a legendary presence, it’s the tragedy of her material and her life since she died at 30, right as her career was beginning to enter the stratosphere.

His music positively reeks of garage rock exhaust fumes, but his presentation is some grandly theatrical, vaudeville-esque carnival of twisted and demented souls. Underrated as a songwriter (so says Bob Dylan, no less), Cooper’s teenage ennui anthems are surprisingly durable and timeless. But I’ll always love him for the gender-bending, guillotine-loving, tongue-in-cheek sex, booze, and rock ethos that pours out of his very core live on stage.

Truly, it's all in the name. Thanks to super-producer Phil Spector, the Crystals assortment of hits lived up to their namesake and proved to be immortal. It doesn't matter which version of the group we're talking about, they left behind a legacy of what great American pop, soul, and rock & roll could be before the British Invasion changed the game.

Favorite Songs:
Then He Kissed Me
Da Doo Ron Ron
He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)
All Grown Up
Girls Can Tell

D – F

New Romanticism kept the early electro-pop singles coming, but once they discovered BDSM it had to go to a darker and more interesting place. Thanks to Depeche Mode, electronic music was allowed to enter the mainstream in a way that no one expected. Like many of the 80s New Wavers, Depeche Mode (along with Anton Corbijn) didn't just influence with their music, they practically invented what we think of as alternative rock music videos.

Favorite Songs:
1) Enjoy the Silence
2) Just Can't Get Enough
3) A Question of Lust

Imagine the animatronics at a theme park gaining sentience, going psycho, and forming a rock band, and you’ll be in the ballpark of Devo. Angular guitar riffs, robotic synths, detached vocals, songs about human devolution and societal frustrations, and a unique visual presentation put them at the forefront of New Wave. They helped pioneer the synthesizer as a main instrument in rock music, treating it with the same reverence that cock-rockers had for guitars. Paranoid and manic in equal measures, Devo satirized American society, imagining it as a hellish landscape in which a lack of emotion was an asset and consuming was a prize to be treasured above all else, it’s easy to now say that they were boundary pushing and slightly misunderstood in their time. But time has only proven them right, and their catalog is now a series of brainy masterpieces delivered with wit and irony.

They didn’t even last for 10 years together, but what a glorious noise they made in that brief period of time. This Los Angeles based punk act gave the lie to the dominant bubblegum-mall punk of the early 2000s. Brody Dalle, pasty and kohl-eyed, was a gorgeous banshee of a frontwoman, equally capable of unleashing a sonic scream or tenderly, but gruffly, caressing a lyric with the same amount of passion. It’s a pity that they couldn’t make it last longer, but for a brief period of time they shone a light and it burned so bright.

Dark, psychedelic and tortured are but three words to describe the post-punk magic of Echo & the Bunnymen. Contradictory impulses – songs frequently talk about depression without slipping into the eternal abyss while the music is a New Wave dirge – are what make this band so astounding. Between 1979 and 1987, they were one of the few truly great British New Wave bands that could give canonized icons The Cure and The Smiths a run for their money.

Between 1997 and 2005, no one even came close to exploring the limits of their genre or being as wildly individualistic as Missy Elliott. After being signed with her original girl group (Sista) fell apart, she teamed up with long-time friend Timbaland and began writing/producing material for other artists. But you couldn’t keep an artist as singular as Missy Elliott away from the spotlight, and she released her debut Supa Dupa Fly in the summer of 1997 and that was just the beginning of her reign as the queen of hip-hop/rap. She owned her sexuality, brought fresh ideas to a stagnant genre, and introduced eastern rhythms and space-age electronics, opening up a whole new world that no one could even imagine existing. Her presence is deeply missed on the current music scene.

The English Beat were one of the keynote groups of the second generation of ska bands, and much like their contemporaries the Specials, the English Beat experimented wildly within the genre. Not content with crafting solid, grooved-out jams like “Can’t Get Used to Losing You” or punky rave-ups like “Click Clack,” they also wanted to explore R&B rhythms with their ska sound. The multiracial band traded lead duties between Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger, which explains the tight back-and-forth dynamic between these extremes. They only released three albums, but from these recordings one can hear the foundations of the third-wave ska revivalists. Of the major players at 2-Tone, the English Beat may just be the most undervalued of them.

Favorite Songs:
Mirror in the Bathroom
Save It for Later
Tears of a Clown
I Confess
Hands Off She’s Mine

When most stars are caught in such a precarious situation as Marianne Faithfull was in her infamous 1960s scandal with the Rolling Stones, it usually signifies the end of their career. But Marianne Faithfull is not like most stars. Her career beginnings as a beautiful, high voiced orchestral pop singer stand in stark contrast to her edgier original compositions like “Sister Morphine” and “Broken English.” Once she took control of her career and released her darker, more aggressive music, she not only secured her place as an icon, but found her true artistic voice – a lacerating, mysterious figure who addressed addiction, sex and despair with unflinching realism.

Few bands have undergone quite as many changes – in musical style and band members – as Fleetwood Mac. They began life as harder blues-rock band before becoming the dominating figures of the 70s pop/lite-rock scene. For me, the greatest incarnation has always been the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham one. The combination of rough musicality of the British members with the singer/songwriter emotionality and meticulous pop craftsman of Nicks/Buckingham lead to adventurous and enduring songs like “Go Your Own Way” and “Tusk.”

G – J

There are gifted musicians, and then there’s someone like Marvin Gaye. Gaye changed the entire face of R&B and soul music, injecting a socio-political conscience and daring musical arrangements. The seeds for monumental works like What’s Going On or Here, My Dear can be found in some of his earliest singles. Think of how he transformed “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” into a minimalist funk groove that slowly builds in intensity, probing deeper into the emotional freefall the lyrics convey. By the time he released his final recordings, his albums had reached a point of artistry in which his works were fragments of his soul laid bare for all of us to witness.

Favorite Songs:
1) What’s Going On
2) I Heard It Through the Grapevine
3) Can I Get a Witness
4) I Want You
5) When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You?

Springing from the mind of Alison Goldfrapp, with a major assist from Will Gregory, this is a band that brought the disco and the art-house into the same building. Each album a zag where the previous one would zing, Goldfrapp has managed to carve out a place for themselves in electronic music as the reigning champions of a dirty underground. Frequently prone to conceive of their albums as an all-encompassing experience – the music ties into the visuals ties into the sometimes oblique lyrics. Don’t let her cherubic face and breathy, sometimes operatic vocals fool you, Alison Goldfrapp tends to spin out tales of kinky sexuality, mental illness, and body image issues yet still makes them sound like dreamy sighs. The best way I can think of to describe them is what would happen if David Lynch directed a Kate Bush music video and dressed her up as a pagan glam-rock sex goddess.

Who knew that the burnouts of Dookie wouldn’t just out-last their peers, but would remain at the forefront of popular culture nearly twenty years afterwards? As they went along they developed away from 70s punk revivalists to politically-minded rock opera creators. Even when their songs became part of a larger structure and were filled with digs at Neo-Conservatives, they knew that the brilliance of 70s punk was that it was just pop music played obscenely hard and fast. And by crafting steady, sturdy singles like “Holiday” or “Let Yourself Go,” that’s how they’ve been able to remain relevant after all these years.